Bill Haley and His Comets (US)

1952 – 1981 Disbanded

The band Bill Haley led from 1952 until his death in 1981, and the act that carried rock and roll to a mass audience before anyone else did. 'Rock Around the Clock', cut in April 1954 and going nowhere until it opened the film 'Blackboard Jungle' a year later, was the record that made the music a global business rather than an American genre. Haley was already thirty when it broke, a former western swing bandleader with a kiss curl, which is part of why the press could never decide whether he was a menace or a novelty. The Comets were the first American rock and roll act to tour Australia, for Lee Gordon in January 1957, and the first to tour Britain, arriving at Southampton on the Queen Elizabeth on 5 February 1957 to a crowd of thousands. More than a hundred musicians passed through the band; the best-known line-up included Rudy Pompilli on saxophone, Franny Beecher on lead guitar, Billy Williamson on steel and Johnny Grande on piano. Haley died in Harlingen, Texas on 9 February 1981.

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